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August 13, 1999/1 Elul 5759, Vol. 51, No.45
Suicide touchy subject, but must be addressed
CHRIS GARIFO
Staff Writer
Ask rabbis and mental health professionals about suicide within the Jewish community, and their initial reaction is to pause, to hesitate. Then they explain that suicide among Jews is a sensitive subject, one that many are not very comfortable discussing.
This is because taking one's own life is "a violation that involves a very basic and cardinal principle" of Jewish faith and law, explains Rabbi David Rebibo of Beth Joseph Congregation in Phoenix. In committing suicide, an individual commits an act "that is exclusively the domain of God" - the giving and taking of human life.
The experts admit, however, that Jewish people at least consider committing suicide as often as do people from any other segment of American society, and that suicide deaths are a reality within the Jewish community.
Beth El Congregation's Rabbi Rick Sherwin says he's "not comfortable speaking about (suicide) because it touches people's lives in this congregation," but he also admits that it's a subject that should be of concern within the Jewish community.
"If it's a problem in American society, I guarantee it's a problem for the Jewish community," he says. "We are just so much a part of society that whatever ails America also ails us."
A report released Wednesday, July 28, showed that nearly 30,000 Americans committed suicide in 1996. In that same year, Arizona's suicide rate was seventh among the states, with 16.3 per 100,000 compared with a national rate of 10.8. In 1997, the latest year for which state numbers are available, more than 800 people killed themselves in Arizona.
In July, U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher and Tipper Gore, the wife of Vice President Al Gore, issued a "call to action" to reduce suicide, the eighth-leading cause of death in the United States.
"(Suicide) is a dramatic problem in our community," says Charles Arnold, an attorney who specializes in mental-health cases. "We don't do a very good job here (in Arizona)."
Arnold blames the state's high suicide rate - he notes Arizona has the nation's highest elderly suicide rate and the second-highest teen suicide rate - on the fact that much of the state's population has moved here from elsewhere and thus has a weakened support network, combined with a politically conservative state government that believes "it's not government's responsibility to be dealing with this stuff."
"When you couple that government lack of participation with the lack of deep-seeded family support networks, you've got trouble," Arnold says. "And that trouble shows up as outrageously high statistics of all kinds."
Dr. Mark Wellek, a Phoenix psychiatrist who works with children, believes suicide statistics within the Valley's Jewish community are probably much lower than in the rest of the community. He says a likely explanation for this is the Jewish community's emphasis on education.
"Well-educated people have a tendency to get help; people who get help usually don't kill themselves," Wellek says.
Rabbi Zalman Levertov of Congregation Bais Menachem Chabad-Lubavitch believes that suicide, nevertheless, is a problem within the Jewish community that needs to be addressed.
"There are Jewish suicides," Levertov says. "Even one is more than it should be."
Linda Scott, clinical coordinator for Jewish Family and Children's Service, says that people who have strong religious convictions "of any kind tend to be very much conflicted about whether or not they would actually follow through (on suicide) because, generally, religious doctrines of any kind prohibit that."
Alan Lipman, a Georgetown University professor who teaches a course in abnormal psychology, says religion may affect a person's likelihood of becoming depressed, which is recognized as a major factor in suicide.
"On the one hand, if you come from a Jewish background, the strong tradition of family and self-improvement could help to insulate you against depression," Lipman says. "On the other hand, however, the great idealism of the Jewish faith and that same desire for self-improvement lead many people to become quite critical of themselves, and that self-criticism could act as an influence toward someone becoming depressed. So, you could see how it could cut both ways."
Lipman doubts that one's faith alone could "insulate" any individual from attempting suicide.
"No matter whether you're Jewish or Catholic or Buddhist, you're still having relationships, and those relationships can go bad; and you're still working at a job, and your job can go wrong," Lipman says. "And it's those sorts of negative life events that typically set the stage for depression, thus suicide."
Lipman says that of greater value as a buffer against suicide is the social support available to people.
"Judaism provides more social support than most religions," says Lipman, who is Jewish. "To the extent that you have more effective social support, the suicide risk goes down."
Rabbi Mendy Deitsch of Chabad of the Southeast Valley says he believes suicide among Jews, especially Orthodox Jews, is "really, really uncommon."
"The nature of the Jewish community is we tend to help each other out," Deitsch says.
Levertov says that, while suicide is considered a violation of Jewish law, the attitude the religion has toward those who kill themselves is very sympathetic.
"If you look at this day and age, the pressures that go with it, most rabbis would look at (suicide) more as a sickness," Levertov says.
In some religions, including Judaism, suicide deaths have been treated differently post-mortem than other deaths.
For example, in the past, the dead bodies of those who killed themselves generally were not allowed to be buried in Roman Catholic cemeteries; today, that is no longer the case.
However, the church still considers suicide a violation of canon law, says the Rev. Timothy Davern, pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Tempe, and in some cases in which suicide is not an act of desperation, but a calculated, purposeful act (such as when someone was involved with the Hemlock Society), the church may prohibit a Catholic burial.
In the past, the bodies of Jewish people who committed suicide traditionally were buried on the outskirts of a Jewish cemetery, but that is no longer necessarily the case either. Raymond Perlman of Sinai Mortuary in Phoenix says that suicide deaths today usually are dealt with the same as others.
"To put (those bodies) in a corner or on the side is really additional punishment for the survivors," Perlman says. "So we would just classify (the suicide) as another death. Unfortunately, a suicide death in most cases punishes the living."
Jewish teachings suggest that those who commit suicide would not face God's punishment, Sherwin says.
"Our teachings tell us that when we are in pain, God cries with us," Sherwin says. "If God doesn't judge and condemn, then how can we?"
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